Heat Pumps, the great deception?

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

Thought it would be valid to give this it's own thread.

There's a lot of hype going on just now about heat pumps and I had a conversation with my plumber friend who also maintains our boiler whilst he was doing the service recently about what would be entailed if and when we have to fit one. His advice was to completely forget about being an "early adopter" as he forsees some considerable problems with the whole thing ranging from installation costs far exceeding what is being mentioned to running costs and inability to actually provide the level of comfort you get with existing gas boilers.

So, no, don't do it until you've no option he said, and then added "at your age I doubt if you're going to have to be worried about it in your lifetime". He did also say though that he wouldn't be surprised if gas prices got a big hike to force the change. Do you believe in conspiracies?

Then this morning I came across this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhAKMAcmJFg&t=1s I'll say no more!

 

[Troubles with 500c]

I read an article where it suggested the price of installation and the pump will come down, but upgrading your houses insulation to enable the pump to work will be where the real cost is.

Have the Government introduced legislation to ensure all new builds are fitted with a heat pump and the necessary insulation, if not they should.

 

[chris3234]

I read an article where it suggested the price of installation and the pump will come down, but upgrading your houses insulation to enable the pump to work will be where the real cost is.

Have the Government introduced legislation to ensure all new builds are fitted with a heat pump and the necessary insulation, if not they should.

And solar panels and a small storage battery to even out grid demand


But that won't happen as too many party donors are property developer's

 

[jimboy]

I have no intention or ever have, in installing one of these. Apart from all the obvious things, well to me anyway, the upheaval and mess inside the house would be, well, another major issue.

 

[varesecrazy]

Agreed
As I understand it..

The capacity of 'heating' is poor:

So you need a massive investment in the fabric of the building for draughtproofing..etc..
and potentially underfloor heating too.

Funny how those Vicars glued to the M25 junctions are encouraging us all to get the nations Victorian and Edwardian homes up to a 1980's standard..
And the press are all talking about '2030 predictions'

If you DO get the correct grade of Housing.. even things like outside taps and kitchen:bathroom extractors are a big deal.

My 1896 house is up against ( dug out of..) a damp earth bank.. so its the least of my worries ;-)

 

[pooroldcodger]

I see this as a very depressing but perfect example of what happens when politicians involve themselves in things they don't understand, and truth be told, don't want to understand.
So for motives purely driven by ego (the desire to leave a "legacy") and to have something to say at this ridiculous Cock26 conference (yes I know I spelt that wrong) this agenda for doing away with efficient gas boilers has been concocted by the "advisors".
These will be the same type of advisor who instructed Gordon Brown's government to incentivise diesel vehicles because of lower Co2 emissions. Presumably not knowing anything about what else a diesel puts in to the air.
So now they want to force on us new technology with so many unanswered questions it is hard to know where to start.
I want to see us play a part in dealing with climate change through technological solutions as they are needed, not bankrupting ourselves just for a Johnson family ego trip.
We are now being told that face to face meetings are a thing of the past (just as 25000 are flying to Glasow for a face to face conference).
HS2 was sold on the basis of saving time and therefore raising productivity. So it has probably never looked mire irrelevant than it does now.
I would much rather the money was spent on an upgraded power transmission grid and storage capacity so that we can use electricity from where it is windy to where it is needed. At the moment we all actually pay windfarms for electricity that we can't use because it is in the wrong place. Madness!
And a water system, north to south and east to west, so we can even out water supply as well.

 

[chris3234]

I see this as a very depressing but perfect example of what happens when politicians involve themselves in things they don't understand, and truth be told, don't want to understand.
So for motives purely driven by ego (the desire to leave a "legacy") and to have something to say at this ridiculous Cock26 conference (yes I know I spelt that wrong) this agenda for doing away with efficient gas boilers has been concocted by the "advisors".
These will be the same type of advisor who instructed Gordon Brown's government to incentivise diesel vehicles because of lower Co2 emissions. Presumably not knowing anything about what else a diesel puts in to the air.
So now they want to force on us new technology with so many unanswered questions it is hard to know where to start.
I want to see us play a part in dealing with climate change through technological solutions as they are needed, not bankrupting ourselves just for a Johnson family ego trip.
We are now being told that face to face meetings are a thing of the past (just as 25000 are flying to Glasow for a face to face conference).
HS2 was sold on the basis of saving time and therefore raising productivity. So it has probably never looked mire irrelevant than it does now.
I would much rather the money was spent on an upgraded power transmission grid and storage capacity so that we can use electricity from where it is windy to where it is needed. At the moment we all actually pay windfarms for electricity that we can't use because it is in the wrong place. Madness!
And a water system, north to south and east to west, so we can even out water supply as well.

What are you on about?
We allready had national grid that can move electric all over the UK



It's.not that the we can use the wind energy because it can't get places


It's that there's nothing to us it on
E.g not enough demand when the wind is strong
Hence why we need storage capacity
Personally I think alll new builds should have. Afew kWh of storage as well as solar panels required by law

 

[pooroldcodger]

Yes you are quite right - I made my point badly. I did actually say "upgraded power transmission grid and storage capacity"
It has always been known that we don't have capacity to store electricity from wind farms So how can we rely on it?

 

[AndyRKett]

In Norwich and I’m sure as with many cities all over the country, there are a lot, thousands of 100+ year old terrace houses built during the boom in industry.

Most of these houses are very small, lack any sort of insulation, no cavity wall and difficult to insulate floors. They where never designed to have even central heating and so many have been drilled full of holes over the years to make way for pipes and clamps.
In many cases these houses don’t even have any sort of land neither a back or front garden of any sort.

I can see if the government are to really make a difference then they will need to look at knocking many of these houses down and rebuilding something much more efficient.

How do you fit a heat pump to a house that has nowhere to put one? How do you justify environmental incentives on housing that pours its heat out through the walls and floors.

To knock down many of these houses would require 4 - 5 times the land to build a replacement.

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

The whole insulation "thing" needs to be carefully approached too. My youngest boy has an ex-miner's cottage. It's a charming little house and they love it dearly. It's a semi with the one next door with only a single brick's thickness between them and common space under the floor due to every second brick being absent below floor level so the air blows right through from the air bricks - It's baltic under the floors! in the loft the brick divider doesn't go all the way up to the roof timbers and you can look over it into next door's roof space.

Before they bought the house the previous owners, a housing association, had cavity insulation blown into the outer cavity walls. All the houses in the street which were owned by them had this done and now there are serious problems with black mold forming on some of the interior walls in winter. Not that long ago there was a company which aggressively marketed this type of insulation to home owners on our wee estate and I was giving it some thought. Don't do it Dad, said my daughter, who is a civil engineer. She went on to tell me she has been called in on a number of occasions to asses and produce reports for people who've had this done to their houses and ended up with damp and mold problems. Apparently getting the insulation back out again is much more involved and expensive than putting it in! My daughter advises them not to be tempted to reduce the airflow under the floors either as this will almost certainly exacerbate the existing damp problems - She's looking into what their most satisfactory remedy might be. Luckily, being his sister, there's no charge!

 

[chris3234]

In Norwich and I’m sure as with many cities all over the country, there are a lot, thousands of 100+ year old terrace houses built during the boom in industry.

Most of these houses are very small, lack any sort of insulation, no cavity wall and difficult to insulate floors. They where never designed to have even central heating and so many have been drilled full of holes over the years to make way for pipes and clamps.
In many cases these houses don’t even have any sort of land neither a back or front garden of any sort.

I can see if the government are to really make a difference then they will need to look at knocking many of these houses down and rebuilding something much more efficient.

How do you fit a heat pump to a house that has nowhere to put one? How do you justify environmental incentives on housing that pours its heat out through the walls and floors.

To knock down many of these houses would require 4 - 5 times the land to build a replacement.

With the sizes of modern houses they will probably be smaller still


But that being said all houses need a place to park a electric car to charge it these days

 

[lunchbeers]

As above, lots of houses will suffer if insulation is added where there was none before, damp and mould will run rampant, the Victorian houses of old has solid brick walls, lime mortar and draughty windows, thankfully heating fuels were cheap and plentiful at the time.

Again, as above, airflow is key, and if you can't introduce airflow, you shouldn't be adding any insulation.

I specify a lot of air source heating on most of my builds, a well sorted one in a new, properly insulated home is fantastic and will easily provide enough heat, but we're always careful to add a gas backup!

I'm considering one for my place, built in 2004 as I'm on electric heating and hot water.

 

[varesecrazy]

I'm considering one for my place, built in 2004 as I'm on electric heating and hot water.

My weekday flat is 1980's and the whole estate is 'gas free' ..
Economy7 heating (storage heaters..) and hot water is Double what a leaky Victorian miners cottage costs on gas.

Plenty to keep me wary of Electric.

I recall news items about a Central Scotland ..Housing Association fitting
'Electrically powered Central Heating Boilers..'
Apparently the energy bills were massive..!!

 

[Troubles with 500c]

It’s meant to be getting warmer so this should only be a temporary problem ;-)

On a more serious note, I think authorities with large numbers of properties like this will have to think about schemes that provide communal hot water.

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

My weekday flat is 1980's and the whole estate is 'gas free' ..
Economy7 heating (storage heaters..) and hot water is Double what a leaky Victorian miners cottage costs on gas.

Plenty to keep me wary of Electric.

I recall news items about a Central Scotland ..Housing Association fitting
'Electrically powered Central Heating Boilers..'
Apparently the energy bills were massive..!!

About 9 years ago Mrs J decided our perfectly functional kitchen was no longer fit for purpose and we needed a makeover. A very good friend who owns a kitchen fitting business got involved because his wife is a very good friend of Mrs J. (If you have a John Lewis kitchen fitted up here it might well be him who turns up on your door step). After an in depth survey it was decided to completely gut the kitchen and our small utility area and start again from bare walls. This involved scrapping the central heating boiler and fitting a condensing boiler in a new location - We decided to keep the hot water tank though so the boiler is not a combie. To achieve this a considerable amount of plumbing work had to be done before the kitchen build could begin but the kitchen had to be stripped for access to water and gas pipes which necessitated floors coming up in places.

The result of all this was that we lived in the open plan living room/dining room, cooking with a microwave and electric kettle. Luckily the plumber was able to isolate the kitchen plumbing whilst he worked on it so we still had hot water in the airing cupboard tank but heated with the immersion.

The whole job took roughly a couple of months and right in the coldest months of the winter too. The outcome is pretty good and, I think because he used very high quality units (mereway) it looks as good today as the day it was finished. More importantly though is that Mrs J just loves it and has never found anything about it she doesn't like. So, happy wife, happy life! even if it did cost an arm and half a leg!

During those two months we used the microwave, heated water for drinks and dishwashing with the electric kettle, and heated water in the tank with the immersion for a couple of hours every evening so we had water for baths and showers (just the two of us) We also had two medium sized thermostatically controlled electric convector heaters which kept the worst of the cold off in the living room with a fan heater for a quick boost if it got really cold but we tried not to use the fan heater because it really made the electric meter howl in protest! The rest of the house went unheated - double duvet on the bed, quite cozy after you'd built the heat up a bit but torture getting up in the mornings!

Looking back on it afterwards the electric bills were frightening for that period - more than heating the whole house normally with the gas central heating. Mrs J came up with the calculation that kilowatt hours generated with electricity cost 6 times what kilowatt hours cost using gas!

I think we've all got some very unpleasant surprises coming very soon regarding the size of our utility bills and the politicians are far too frightened to grasp the nettle and start preparing us with some realistic comment.

 

[pooroldcodger]

In Norwich and I’m sure as with many cities all over the country, there are a lot, thousands of 100+ year old terrace houses built during the boom in industry.

Most of these houses are very small, lack any sort of insulation, no cavity wall and difficult to insulate floors. They where never designed to have even central heating and so many have been drilled full of holes over the years to make way for pipes and clamps.
In many cases these houses don’t even have any sort of land neither a back or front garden of any sort.

I can see if the government are to really make a difference then they will need to look at knocking many of these houses down and rebuilding something much more efficient.

How do you fit a heat pump to a house that has nowhere to put one? How do you justify environmental incentives on housing that pours its heat out through the walls and floors.

To knock down many of these houses would require 4 - 5 times the land to build a replacement.

Our eldest lives in a terraced weavers cottage which is well over 200 years old. It has solid stone floors, no cavity walls, just enough length outside the house (no drive of course) for a modern day Mini Cooper S to sit without encroaching on next door's space. But it is their house where they want to live and they love it.
To think you could insulate this house to an adequate level to make an ashp viable is fanciful. And as already mentioned where would it go?
And as the terraced houses are obviously close together imagine the noise of them all going at once 24/7?

 

[varesecrazy]

Our eldest lives in a terraced weavers cottage which is well over 200 years old. It has solid stone floors, no cavity walls, just enough length outside the house (no drive of course) for a modern day Mini Cooper S to sit without encroaching on next door's space.
And as the terraced houses are obviously close together imagine the noise of them all going at once 24/7?

A terrace full of mini coopers..

I dont think its any louder than an aircon unit.. and probably requires similar siting.

My issues would be getting permissions.. plenty of places cannot have sky dishes.. nevermind a big fan.assisted block hanging from the building

 

[lunchbeers]

My weekday flat is 1980's and the whole estate is 'gas free' ..
Economy7 heating (storage heaters..) and hot water is Double what a leaky Victorian miners cottage costs on gas.

Plenty to keep me wary of Electric.

I recall news items about a Central Scotland ..Housing Association fitting
'Electrically powered Central Heating Boilers..'
Apparently the energy bills were massive..!!

My brother's current flat is a conversion from offices, it has a combined electric central heating and hot water storage, he's not on economy 7 either.

I'm hoping to switch our my lone existing storage heating for a air-con setup, I'm ground floor so can have a pump easily enough

 

[pooroldcodger]

A terrace full of mini coopers..

I dont think its any louder than an aircon unit.. and probably requires similar siting.

My issues would be getting permissions.. plenty of places cannot have sky dishes.. nevermind a big fan.assisted block hanging from the building

No - not a terrace of Mini Coopers. I was trying to
Illustrate the small amount of space outside the house. But this is a car based forum so I stated the car type.

 

[varesecrazy]

Round here you cannot fit a 'Ventaxia' extractor for a kitchen..or bathroom

I can Imaging car charging points are 2030+

My son reckons these flats will be demolished by then.. at least they were NOT heavily clad